Northleach, Cotswolds

So what was the village like? Absolutely charming in fact...on our first walk we met a couple of the local residents -

- who were very pleased to see us (and made Thomas quite excited)... ;) The area, although being largely sheep free on our visit, made an absolute fortune during the 15th Century from the Wool trade and (apart from some semi-sympathetic new housing on the outskirts) most of the buildings date back to that time (and are largely unspoiled) -

- including the "Cathedral of the Cotswolds" the Church of St Peter and Paul -

- which seems disproportionately impressive considering the town it serves (for the reason of enthusiastic funding from wealthy donors) and other buildings obviously built in Tudor times -

- stone on the ground floor with a timber upper storey...

Although nothing much is made of it (oddly, as it would be a fantastic tourist draw) there are also supposed to be a great number of stone vaulted tunnels beneath the town (including, as I mentioned in my last post, the "Guggle" - purportedly some sort of underground chapel - which lent it's name to the lane where we stayed), although no-one seems to know why or when these passages were dug (disappointingly)...

On the edge of town is another point of interest, the old prison -

- apparently you used to be able to tour it, seeing how prisoners were treated when the building was in use -

- unfortunately it's now just a coffee shop (albeit in an unusually shaped building)...

Oh and we couldn't help but be amused by the post office (looking a little more like a farm yard than anything else)...

...the rest of town consists of little alleyways -

- a small convenience store, a dolls house shop, a bakery, some sort of wine bar, a Chinese/fish and chip shop (you know the sort of thing), a very expensive to visit private collection of musical boxes (we didn't do the tour as it was going to cost us almost £20, but the gift shop gave us a decent idea of what to expect)...oh and three pubs (including one that was rather special), but more on that in my next post... ;)